Ideas for a 2nd playthrough

[Anubis]

So while i haven't finished the game yet, stuck ill-prepared for the last fight, i'm already planning a 2nd run once that is finished, and i would ofc like it to be as different as possible than my first one.

In the first one my team was Ifan as an Archer/summoner/Pyro guy, Red Prince as a Tanky 2 handed guy with some Geomancer in it, Sebille as a scoundrel/necromancer, and Lohse as a hydrosophist/aerothurge.

So my new playthrough should definitely have Fane and Beast in. I was warmed up to the idea of having Beast as my main character, and build him a superheavy Dwarf Warrior. But i'm really open to ideas. I also haven't used Geomancer that much, and Polymorph at all, so i will focus a lot on that.

So i'd really appreciate any suggestions from you guys. Tnx

[Chaoslink]

Fane can easily take the Geomancer role as some of the poison spells you’ll learn will naturally heal him when cast. There’s a really nasty combo to get physical damage out of him too. High Geo increases physical armor gains. This extends to all types of gains. If you can fortify, bone cage and all that fun stuff, even physical armor potions, you can get your physical armor pretty high I’ve had as much as 40,000 physical armor in fights and it technically can go much higher. The Reactive armor spell deals more damage based on your physical armor amount. The higher it is, the harder it hits. However, there’s an interesting catch. It also hits you for that damage. Which is fine given how high your armor is, it doesn’t matter. However, if you are fighting a big scary boss with a high health pool... casting shackles of pain on them first then doing this combo means that you hit them and yourself, transferring the self damage to them as well, effectively doubling the damage as well as giving you two chances to crit. This makes it a pretty crazy nuclear finisher for physical damage while still being primarily a magic damager.

If you build your other character to be a heavy hitting physical damager, then this combos quite nicely. If you want to somewhat keep to Beast’s battlemage concept as well, you can mix things up by making him a spear build finesse character and using cleave spears whenever you can. Sparking Swings casts a spark per target hit and while dual STR cleave weapon’s make this pretty dirty, spear cleave range is something like 45% of a whirlwind on regular attacks. The range is huge. Mix that with torturer and worm tremor from Fane and you can outrange enemy melee characters with the spear attack range, dealing your melee damage while the enemy can’t attack you back. Geo pairs insanely well with physical builds despite being magic since oil slows and the entangled effect both have dodge reduction, meaning that just 5% accuracy from a venom tune in the neck slot guarantees you’ll never miss melee attacks, and with entangled and slow, this even extends to targets with a dodge aura effect.

[tarkin96]

I'm planning my second playthrough, too. I'm planning on having a completely different setup. I went Fane, Lohse, Prince, custom human. They were set up as pyro-necro mage, hydro-aero-war, war-poly, and hunt-war-scoundrel.

I'm thinking of taking Sebille, Ifan, Beast, custom undead. I plan on doing necro-summon, pyro-hunt, war-geo, scoundrel-war-hydro, and sprinkling in any others as I need them.

I'll also being playing an evil campaign, rather than a mostly-good.

[Tachyon]

I have a second game to mess around in and I'm using a couple of mod classes - Helaene's Vampire and Mirage classes. They're both very interesting classes, I have to say. I'm running the Mirage in this one and in my main game I don't have a Vampire but I am using some of the skillbooks to switch Beast up a bit.

Vampire runs nicely and is pretty true to what you'd expect, but the Mirage - a sort of illusionist - is capable of summoning an animated sword or bow and as well as an illusory-looking mage to help in fights. Great fun!

[Chaoslink]

Also, another synergy to my above concept is to get Beast Poison Wave. It gives a turn of earth/poison immunity so you can ignore friendly fire while the effect is up. Mix that with all the touch magic spells on Beast and you’re golden.

[Anubis]

Thanks for the input.

I read only that Beast is quite a bore to play with... Is that true? I kinda want him to be my lead and not Fane for some reason. I haven't used any spears, my only melee fighter was the Red Prince and i just went with Dual Handed all the time. It felt by far the most effective. On one hand i want to try something new and perhaps give a shield to Beast, but on the other there is nothing like him looking like from LOTR and just destroying everything, so i kinda want that too :D

Anyway thanks for the suggestions, keep them coming if someone has any new ideas.

[Chaoslink]

Beast had the issue since release that his quest basically went Act one your mission is to get to act two. In act two you have one early objective to talk to Lohar, something everyone already does, then your objective is to go to act four. So his quest was basically go to act four from the get go. There’s nothing else to it. Since then, he’s gotten more interactivity with random people so he’s more interesting than before, though his quest is still lacking. He’s not terrible, he’s just a bit plain.

The thing with shield builds, is that they’re not really all that good. STR weapon and shield is probably the weakest setup you can run. Anything it does, something else does better. Like most things, it can still work, but “tanking” isn’t really a thing in Divinity since there’s not really all that much in terms of Aggro control and what little there is tends to be CC like rooting a melee so they can only attack things in melee range. But why give them something to attack right?

Two handed weapons are generally the best for melee, while dual weapons works on rogues or battlemages with dual cleave weapons trying to make the most out of sparking. Weapon and shield is for mages since their weapons are just stat sticks anyway. Shields on melee just inhibit the effectiveness of their melee attacks for survivability in the most inefficient way. The worst way to go about survivability for your team is soaking damage. You should be looking to avoid, mitigate or prevent damage primarily. This is best done through CC effects and things like line of sight. Tanking damage isn’t really a valuable thing if you can avoid said damage instead.

If you do use a shield melee, going with daggers is the better option since it does pretty much everything a strength weapon build does, but it gains all the utility of a rogue and the scoundrel skills plus that extra mobility of backlash and a more balanced armor value with the extra magic protection finesse armor has. For more efficiency, it’s definitely the better way to go. Otherwise a two handed build wins out. Spears I suggested just because they’re a weird weapon many players don’t ever really build for. They can be awkward as finding a new one can be a struggle at times, but their long range makes for some interesting tactics. Spells like Whirlwind gain additional range because of the weapon range and if you can build around spears with cleave, you can do some pretty nasty things. Imagine a late game build with a 50% cleave spear. If you can get a 2x crit multiplier and high crit, you can get your crits to hit for 100% damage on cleave. Mix in 1hp and death wish and you can bump that to 200% cleave and 400% main target. But it gets better. If Fane does the above build and buffs his armor to a ridiculous level, you can have him shackle something in close range, then attack Fane and cleave the secondary target so they take that 200% cleave alongside the 400% main damage as well dealing 600% weapon damage per strike. Being at 1hp is a risk, but as long as you’re below 50% you gain a reasonable benefit and can use the What A Rush talent to make your AP start at 5 each turn and have a cap of 7. Mix with Executioner and the amount of AP you get to play with is pretty nasty. Though you do have to self damage yourself before fights and keep him low to really get the most from the death wish spear cleave build.

I did it once. Didn’t always work, but when it did, it was nasty the damage you could do. And since it’s an auto attack based build, memory isn’t important much so you can cap finesse earlier and spare more points for wits.

[Amadel]

Install Epic Encounter 2 mod. And problem is solved

[Anubis]

Thanks again.

One more question. Is there any bonus for not taking someone in your party? I'm trying to figure out whom to give the last 2 spots too. I'm pretty sure i want Ifan, but what about the last? If i don't have Lohse, do i have other things i can do with the Doctor? Same if i don't have Sebille, any bonus in that with the way the Elves do in the game? Thanks

[Chaoslink]

There’s different options yes. While not all of them are possibly things you may want to do, things do play out differently depending on who you do or don’t have. Some places and events simply don’t happen at all as well, like Lohse and the candles thing. Without her, that doesn’t happen at all.

You can play lone wolf if you just want the two characters total though. There’s no benefits to only having two or three characters otherwise though.

[LukanGamer]

mods or role play or both

[「Science」]

Here's an idea... Tactician mode - Solo - No followers. More challenging and fun in my opinion